Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
The type of Janet's lying has been not only in the form of
falsifications about matters which directly concerned herself,
but also involved extensive manufacture of long stories,
phantasies. Meeting people she might give them extensive
accounts of the wealth and importance of her own family. She
once spread the report that her sister was married and living in
a fine home close by, giving many elaborate details of the new
household. Such stories naturally caused much family
embarrassment. Then she worked up an imaginary entertainment and
gave invitations to her brothers and sister at the request of a
pretended hostess. Just before the event she, simulating the
hostess, telephoned that an accident had taken place and the
party would not be given. An extremely delicate situation arose
because she alleged a certain young man wanted to marry her. The
truth of her assertions in this matter never was investigated.
The parents felt it quite impossible to go to the young man about
the facts on account of the danger of exposing their daughter.
They were long embarrassed by the extent to which she kept this
affair going, but it finally was dropped without any social
scandal occurring. In this and other affairs the family
situation was at times unbearable because of the possibility that
there might be some truth underlying the girl's statements. As
the years went on Janet, of course, suffered from her loss of
reputation, but still continued her practices of lying. In the
two years before she left home she worked as a clerk. Previously
she had held two or three situations and was reported to give
good satisfaction in her work, but something would always come up
about money matters, or other things, which would finally give
rise to trouble. It is not known that she ever really took any
money except the last time when she ran away and took a
considerable sum from her parents.
A period of extensive untruthfulness and deception occurred
before she left home. Janet represented to her parents that she
was working at a certain place after she had left. She got into
some mix-up about money matters, the rights of which never were
straightened out. As usual, the affair was too complicated to be
understood by anything short of a prolonged investigation. After
things had come to this pass and her parents hardly knew what to
do with her, she took money from them and ran away. She was
readily traced because the ticket agent in her home town could
give a description of her. She had bought a ticket to an
intermediate point and there stopped over night. Her father
followed her thus far. It seems when she finally got to New York
she hunted up the distant relatives who took her in and informed
the mother. The girl intended to earn her own living and soon
found a good place. She was always able to make a good
presentation of herself, being a quiet and convincing
conversationalist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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